"My Prison-Cure in America", Chapter 17
Adapted from Annemarie Schwarzenbach, by Cleo Varra
Read previous: #16. How Did I Stop?
--------------------------
--------------------------
WHITE PLAINS, NY-- 1941
On the next night, it began to rain.
The rain started softly and slowly, and grew stronger until it fell evenly, filling the whole sky and roaring like a great river. Those of us sitting by our windows in the evening, or during the sleepless hours of the night, hoping for a breath of fresh air, sometimes averted our disappointed and weary eyes from the wide, unforgiving sky to rest on the silhouette of a familiar tree in the yard, or to follow the brightly-defined line of a road that led between two rows of dimly lit buildings to the end of the grounds, and out into the forest.
The sunset over the darkening strip of wilderness had long since faded. The soft blue ridges, which seemed to promise increasingly distant horizons, had melted into the pastel blue of the sky, and had perhaps floated away forever. The yard seemed to have turned to clay, under the dreadfully fallen sun. The heat was unchanging, and the ward had fallen silent, as if a great plague had swept over it.
The sky was full of movement! But the spectacle it presented to us, as we waited in the dark behind our dim mesh screens,— this spectacle rolled on silently, at an immeasurable distance— not of this world.
Then masses of white clouds started streaming into the vast range of the night, looking like slowly and steadily moving icebergs. Yes, the black sky, shaken by the drifting ice, resembled a polar sea: the stars sent out the shine of milky northern lights; we sensed crystal coolness.
We longed for sleep.
*****
That night, I pulled the blanket up to my neck and lay still, listening to the rain. I was very calm and fully awake.
I followed my quiet, regular, somewhat jerky breaths, as if to reassure myself of my own life. Outside, I could hear the rain beating on the bare ground, as in a dream; and, as in a dream, I was aware of being alive, but I no longer knew myself, no longer felt my body. I felt as if, in a single effort, I could have gathered my strength, and withdrawn from life itself, if only I wanted to enough.--
—If only I could have spoken to somebody, or buried my face in somebody’s lap, into some beloved arms enclosing me!
I wanted to go to the window and push my forehead against the wire netting. I wanted to look out at the sleeping world. I could hear a light wind rustling in the treetops. And a coolness was coming through the screen, unexpected and ghostly.
I started to walk, but my footsteps pounded and I stopped. I was frozen, listening, terribly tense.
My ears had deceived me.
Those weren’t my footsteps, only my beating heart. I held my breath, and felt a little dizzy.
***
As I watched, my shadow wandered from the wall to the door, and back again. I stared at it with fearful eyes. It seemed to grow wider, and to thicken like a sea of fog, like an immense, undulating fog that settled down in front of me.
And then my feet no longer carried me. The wind outside carried me. The fog picked me up. The cell revolved around me.
I stretched out my arms.
Only when I started to breathe in that wonderful, ghostly coolness did I begin to feel afraid: this night would sweep me away.
And when I tried to throw myself forward, out from this confusion, I stopped as if someone else’s hand were grabbing my chest, and lifting me up again.
For a moment I seemed to be floating, swaying a little, as if held in balance by invisible threads. I was so frightened that I couldn’t think.
In the same instant I felt a huge liberation which emanated in torrents from my heart in all directions and could not be stopped.
These streams, gentle and strong at the same time, passed through my body, and carried my tormented and faltering breath away: through the barred window; through the walls; through the heavy, hot, still air that I no longer felt; farther, into distances I’d all but forgotten.
It was liberation.
***
Then in the love I felt, I lost myself.
My thoughts became confused, and my memory erased. I even forgot my own name.
It was as if the roar of the silence around me were extinguishing all sounds— as if the emptiness had overwhelmed me. I might have been dissolved, I might have been filling the whole cell up enormously, like clouds shattered by lightning, enveloped by warm darkness. I wanted to give in, because my strength was exhausted.
It was a very tender exhaustion.
It was as if I had to fade away, fade away into this tender benevolence— as if I had to give everything, everything I've ever known and understood and possessed, all my strength to a single embrace and hold nothing back.
***
A smile answered me.
It was even-tempered, without scorn and friendly. I heard a soft, almost compassionate voice: — “Have a little more self-respect… you wouldn’t succumb on the first night!”—
And I fell forward, hitting the ground.
***
As after a great danger faced naïvely, I started to wonder what unseen horror had afflicted me. It wasn't over yet: I couldn't think about it without the same thing happening to me all over again. I looked around the room, shaking with fear.
Everything was exactly the same.
***
Far off in the distance, across an unreachable field, I saw a figure moving: like a white candle, or like a shepherd’s crook. I followed it with my eyes. —Why not get up?
A nameless longing seized me. I suddenly clasped my hands in front of my face. I cried.
***
I cannot forget that I cried that night: not from any pain, but because of an insatiable need.
It felt as if I were still having to follow a path, invisible or marked with white. Whatever I encountered along the way, I knew that I should not fear.
***
That might have been several weeks ago, maybe months. Time hadn't mattered to me after that.
*****
"My Prison-Cure in America" is going on hiatus while I see if I can get it published. Thank you for reading, I hope you enjoyed it!
